Did you go to boarding school? Come and talk to me

[OhGood]

I went to boarding school from 7, as did my brother from 5.

My DD and DS are now at these exact ages and I am suddenly being sideswiped by my feelings about this. I keep remembering how unhappy I was, and how hard I had to try to suppress my feelings when I was little, and I have a dawning awareness of how this unhappiness has probably impacted me for all of my life.

I can see how much my DCs need me and DH still, and I can't square this with being sent off to a very strict, old-fashioned school - no contact with parents except weekly letters, and only allowed out 1 weekend a month, etc. Slightly embarrassed about the strength of my emotions.

If you had a similar experience, I would love to know what you think, and how you're feeling about it now.

If you've had these feelings and resolved them, how did you do it? I don't want to wallow in this, but I feel I must do something to work through it.

^Meant my post for DreamyMcDreamy as well. Believe me, DC4 would tell me if he wasn't happy there. In a way, it's worse to know that he prefers being away from home to being in the home situation, which I wouldn't have wished on any child.

PS Pallisers - agree. Though a 16 yo at boarding school was once a 13 yo at boarding school. I refused to countenace it before that.

Again, thinking about this all with knots in my tummy.

I love DS so much that it hurts (you all will surely know how this feels). Of all my children, he is the most like me (which doesn't mean I love him the most, which would be impossible). I have a pain in my chest now, and he has pootled off on a 300 mile journey away from home. Leaving aside the fact that he is a silly arse who is travelling on the wrong ticket, I love him so, so, so, much that I can't begin to describe it. He is doing IGCSE in May. He is on track to get A*s/9s in everything - but last night I told him, obviously, that he will be the same person even if he fails the lot, and I will love him regardless (he said I was bonkers, in slightly less pleasant terms). I love the boy to distraction and back. He knows this. But I still don't regret the boarding.

aw alice I get how much you love him. and 16 is indeed very different than 5, or 7 or 10. Perhaps the earlier one is 'sent' makes a difference? eg obvs the 5 or 7 year old cant make the choice for themselves and IMO not the 10 or 11 year old. Maybe the 13 year old but even then I'd be very cautious. 16, ie into A levels, and as a bridge to uni, I can see why people do that too.

Yolo, that is very kind of you. XH wanted to send DC4 at 8, and I said "over my dead body". But it seems to work for this particular child at this particular moment. The school is spectacular, to my surprise. But if I didn't believe DC4 were happy there, I'd pull him out like a shot... I have been reading this thread all along because I have one boarder, and because I will never be completely satisfied that a child should be anywhere than with their mum (or someone else who loves them to distraction). DC4, an otherwise unhappy child, appears to be in his element. Unfortunately DC5 wants to board too, but as she hasn't got the ridiculous bursary/scholarship combo that DC4 has, it's not on the cards. I wish it were, though...

PS Yolo, XH (otherwise a thundercunt. Sorry - I learnt this expression from MN) and I did more or less make the decision for DC4 when he was 13n (or earlier, as the cut-off point for applications is 10 years and 6 months). Though it was made easier by the fact that every single boy in his year went to boarding school at the end of Year 8.

oh I remember you from another thread! sorry not sure where, and I may only have lurked. Glad he's an XH if a thundercunt tho. x

Ha ha. Yes, he's certainly a thundercunt. I have been dying to use this word...!!

I dont understand why the "it was marvellous, I'm not emotionally stunted" brigade are even here, if I am quite honest? This is about those who have experienced life struggles as a result (maybe? possibly? probably?) from boarding

Dp and his boarding school friends had a great time at boarding school. They really don't see the damage it has done. Talking to the people they live with tells a different story.

Just checking in, it's too late tonight but I need to come back and read the whole thread. I boarded from age 10 and have been struggling now my eldest is a similar age, as OP describes. I find it very difficult to talk to my parents at all at the moment. Maybe in a year or three hey?

Anyway thanks for the thread, I'll catch up on it before commenting further.

I’m going to sound like a gimmer, but I must say what a wonderful thing The Internet is (and MN).

I’ve never met anyone I can discuss this with IRL. I suppose because consciously and subconsciously I’ve arranged my life so I don’t have to. But goodness it’s good to have my thoughts and feelings validated by others who have been through similar.

I'm in a similar situation to Alice, not boarding family, not sent all children to boarding by default, just have one who boards and there are complicated reasons behind it.

It's been an upsetting read some of this and I feel dreadful for what some people have experienced on here. I can only check on material things, such as the food they eat, where they sleep, things that are obvious, but not the emotional damage. That will never be clear.

I know my DS1 was emotionally damaged at his local school though, with daily bullying, his academic progress had stopped, he was becoming a school refuser, I had to pick him up from school regularly with massive stomach cramps due to anxiety, this situation escalated year on year for him and he told everyone how much he hated school.

Boarding was an extreme measure for us as a family, but all of us now see a child who is happier, has put on weight, is back on track academically, is happy and even says he loves school. In his 11 years I had changed him school twice with similar issues, so it wasn't for lack of trying. I went in some many times that I was becoming "that parent".

The other three children still attend his old school but are happy. We all miss him terribly, but it's relief he has finally found a school where he can have a normal education.

Maybe it will damage him in other ways, but the bullying he suffered I reckon had pretty terrible consequences in itself and I was not able to home school him, which was our only choice left.

I stumbled across this thread last night and it's been an emotional read! So much resonates....

I boarded from age 11 and hated it. The (now shut) school I went to features in a recently published book - "Too marvellous for words" which my mother bought me for Christmas, presumably she is trying to convince herself that I too found it marvellous even though she must surely suspect otherwise as this is a subject we never mention.

I wasn't going to read the book but I did, and actually it was more reflective than I thought it would be. An emotional read for me, even though the author attended some 15 years before me and much had changed. I didn't have the truly awful experiences some previous posters describe but I have enough bad memories of my own to fill a book.

So good to find this thread and people who understand.

People like alice and christmas - you are approaching it in the best way you can in your particular circumstances, which is a good thing. I suppose it's almost BECAUSE you don't have the family tradition that you can question everything perhaps?

I was interviewed for a book about my old school - god knows why, and I made some comments about mostly being trained up to be good wives and mothers rather than encouraged to think beyond. My DM was absolutely furious with me for saying that!!

Yes definitely. If he asked me to pull him out of the current school I would do it in a heartbeat.

It's been enlightening to read this thread as it keeps me on high alert for subtle things too.

My parents offered boarding to me at one point. Now I've seen it, I think I was crazy to reject it.

To say that in this thread, full of people sharing the agony and life long negative effects of boarding school for them, is very, very odd.

That's good, Christmas, and just try to ensure he is able to be honest with you. My parents used to say to me that if I was really unhappy at boarding school they would take me out. I was unhappy, however, and they didn't. That's because they didn't realise how unhappy I was. The culture and background to the boarding decision would have made it hard to explicitly tell the Although you would think that me sobbing my eyes out for hours every time I had to go back might have been a clue.......

Theapprentice "That's because they didn't realise how unhappy I was. The culture and background to the boarding decision would have made it hard to explicitly tell them"

I didn't tell my parents that I didn't want to go and that I was unhappy because I didn't have the words or the ability to recognise that what I was feeling wasn't normal. I can look back now and see that what I experienced at boarding school was anxiety and that it was both debilitating and prolonged. What could I have said to my parents? I did enjoy my friendships. I wasn't depressed. But I was very anxious and I felt very much on my own and uncared for on a day to day basis, which is not what a child should be feeling.

I relate to that completely minifingerz. Sometimes, when I was crying before returning to school I would say"mum, I don't want to go back to school". "Why not?" She would ask. But I couldn't explain it. I didn't know why. I just knew I wanted to be at home. And I'm 50 now and fighting back tears as I type.

I don't understand why people have children to send them away, if my job or lifestyle meant I couldn't raise my own children I would change my life to keep them with me or never had them in the first place.

Yy to being unable to say why & how unhappy you were to parents.

We had a complex situation involving physical & mental illness in the family, my sister having to be pulled out of boarding because of hideous bullying, and the fact that I’d asked to go there in the first place. I feel like it was I who decided to go there (when my best friend was going, who I subsequently fell out with) so if I turned round and said I didn’t want to be there, how wrong and bad that would be.

I wasn’t popular but neither was I badly bullied like my sister. I had been popular at prep, and made a good group of friends at comp afterwards, but 11-14 was a write off friendship wise. It’s left me with lifelong insecurities about friendships. I remember once being very sad and empty and trying to speak to a matron about it.

She just stared at me - could not be arsed with me.

So I had no one to talk to. Didn’t have close friends, no pastoral care, and couldn’t admit to my parents I was unhappy as I’d always been popular at prep and had asked to board so thought it was my fault.

Theapprentice I don't think I cried much at the time but I can relate to that triggering feeling - I can't even let myself think of boarding too much or I'm instantly crying. Much more brittle now than I was as a teenager.

Nothing too awful happened to me I guess (except a suicide attempt, but that was on me). The worst of it was the detachment you have to grow. We used to talk about how lucky we were not to live at home because it would be so weird to see your parents every day and what would you talk about? I do feel my parents and I "lost" each other in the process of me learning to "get over" homesickness and them relentlessly presenting me with a positive front. I think they were told never to show that they miss us, always say they are happy to get on with their lives without us, always remind us how lucky we were. Almost impossible for a child to truly feel loved or wanted up against that relentless stonewall of "ooh we're having such FUN without you and don't you just LOVE lacrosse?", I think. I wish they'd said they missed me. I always took it for granted that they really, really didn't so I couldn't be lovable, and I think it's a natural conclusion for a child in that situation to reach.

Yes Macaroni to parents being told not to say they missed us. I actually found a letter written to prospective parents before I went. (My parents left it lying about and I'm very nosey!). It actually told them not to talk about how much they or even our pets missed us as this could cause homesickness! They were advised to be "sensible " . I have no idea as to whether I was missed by my family.

Completely relate to the not being able to say how unhappy you were.

I did the crying at the end of home visits too, but when my parents asked me if I wanted to leave the school I always said no because:

1. The alternative offered was the local comp and the fear of god had been put into me by the elitist snobbery the school inculcated of the 'yobs' who would beat me up if I went there.
2. I'd started my O level syllabus. (We took some exams early) and I believed I would end up as a failure if I quit midway.
3. The main reason was I didn't know that I could feel different anywhere else. I believed (because why wouldn't you?) that all schools made you feel like this.

Basically I had been well primed to believe that there was no better alternative and that leaving would result in personal disaster.

I was sent to boarding school in surrey at the age of 5, after my mother had died two years previously. my brother was sent to a separate boarding school in Bristol, and my father was in the military so I was basically abandoned.
There were many many other young girls similar to me, and lots of international diplomats kids. We were fed & watered etc but i do remember hiding in places a lot, just cowering in dark spaces, I soiled myself regularly and hid the wet clothes.

looking back now I'm horrified that I was left at such a young age, I know it was the done thing in the 70's but it feels like pure abuse.

No family
no love,
no hugs (to this day Im not a huggy person, even with 3 kids of my own)
no reassurance
no treats (other than sweets, hence LOADS of fillings)
no one watching any achievements I'd make
no one to applaud me and look with pride

I was definitely emotionally stunted at some level during my time there, it was survival only

when my kids were little, seeing them at that age just brought back so much of how I'd missed out and no one had noticed, or cared.
I'm crying again as I type, its just so difficult to go back to those days.

Thankfully these days such provision for very young kids is home based rather than institutional. I used to skip over this part of my life story as it was just what was, now I tell my story to people, I want them to understand what went on